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What Is a Precision Knife?

Precision knives, sometimes called precision cutters, include a variety of tools specialized for fine handling and detailed, free-form cuts. Contrast this with box cutters and utility knives, which prioritize strength over easy handling. Precision knives allow for fine motor control, similar to a pen. Some, like a precision paper cutter, are designed to cut specific materials but most precision cutters are effective with a wide variety of materials.

What Are Precision Knives Used For?

These knives are used for a variety of applications, most notably in arts, industrial, or laboratory settings. Typically, a precision knife cuts thinner materials than a box cutter, but depending on their depth, some craft knives and blades can easily handle thicker materials like foam or corrugated packaging.

A crafting knife is a type of precision knife, and as its name suggests, it is primarily used for crafting with materials such as paper, stencils, and pliable sculpting material. The same kind of precision knife is ideal for detailed laboratory work that requires a delicate touch. Many manufacturers in the electronics industry use a Slice® precision knife because of the specific advantages offered by our advanced ceramic blades, which are non-sparking and non-conductive.

Steel is a soft material that dulls quickly. To extend its cutting life, manufacturers aggressively sharpen steel blades far beyond what is needed to cut materials. This workaround jeopardizes user safety. Because our ceramic material is so hard, our blades last up to 11 times longer than steel blades. Our proprietary sharpening process keeps fingers safe while giving you the cutting power you need to make detailed cuts.

Slice safety blades offer other advantages to specific industries, compared with steel blades. All of our blades are non-sparking, non-magnetic, chemically inert, and never rust. In addition, they don't require any oil coating and can be heated up to 1600 degrees Celcius, so are safe for autoclaves. Our blades don't require sharps box disposal and can be recycled.

Slice offers several styles of precision knife: a precision cutter with a micro-ceramic blade, two craft knives with replaceable blades, and the Precision Knife, with a unique ring-shaped handle. We also make a scalpel handle with replaceable blades. All of these tools include slim profiles, ambidextrous handles, non-slip grip features, a safety cap, and our patented finger-friendly edge. The best choice for you will depend on your application and how often you use your tool.

What Are Micro-Blade Precision Cutters?

Micro-blade precision cutters are a category of safety knife that Slice essentially invented with products like the Slice Precision Cutter. The defining feature of this sort of precision tool is a barely-exposed fixed blade. Many precision knife applications are for thin materials like paper, plastic or stencils. When materials are thin, only a very small cutting edge is required to do the job. As a general safety principle, the lowest effective level of blade exposure is the safest. In other words, you don't need a two-inch blade to cut through paper; any more blade than necessary puts your hands at risk.

What Are Replaceable-Blade Precision Cutters?

Replaceable-blade precision cutters include any type of precision cutting tool with a replaceable blade. The Slice Craft Knife is one example of this style of tool (also available as the 10589 with Safety Cap). This kind of cutter works best for materials that are too thick for a fixed micro blade. Other Slice knives in this category include: the Precision Knife and the 10568 Scalpel.

Another advantage to this type of knife is that, when the blade eventually dulls, it can be replaced. Slice craft knife blades come in several styles—rounded-tip, pointed-tip, concave seam rippers, and chisel blades—so they are also customizable. Applications that require a piercing action are better suited for pointed tips, while rounded tips on precision knives add a level of safety to tasks that don't require precision when initiating the cut.